30 greatest one-time sports in Summer Olympics history
By Nick Villano
9. Australian Football
1956 Melbourne Olympics
From one football to another, Australian rules football was given a demonstration spot at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. This gave the sport a chance to showcase itself on an international stage, but it truly was trying to gain more ground in Australia itself.
The Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA) took on a team of the Victorian Football League (VFL) and Victorian Football Association (VFA). They came in as the underdogs, but VAFA ended up winning the game by 26 points.
The issue for the Olympic committee is this sport is basically only played in Australia. It drew a great crowd to the Melbourne Cricket Ground, but it wasn’t a repeatable effort like the other demonstration sport that year, baseball. They could have also gone with two of the other sports up for demonstration that year, surf lifesaving and boomerang throwing. They really tried to lean into the Australian aspect of these Games.
In the end, it wasn’t a great situation for the match. Many events had already taken place, and the Olympic flagpole was very close to the field of play. Despite the detriments, the game proved useful for the future of the sport. There was a recording of the game to see if it would be useful for TV, and it turned out it was. By the next year, the three main TV stations were airing at least part of Australian football games on live TV.